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Recent years, electric vehicles (EVs) have been widely used as urban transit buses in China, but high costs and a dwindling driving distance caused mainly by relatively frequent usage rate have put the electric bus in a difficult position. Range-extended electric bus (REEbus) is taken as an ideal transitional powertrain configuration, but its efficiency is not so high. Besides, with less batteries to endure more frequently charging and discharging, the lifecycle of battery pack can also be shorten. Aiming at it, range-extended electric powertrains with diverse energy storage systems (ESSs) and proper auxiliary power unit (APU) control strategies are matched and compared to find most proper ESS configuration for REEbus through simulation, which is based on a 12 meter-long urban bus.

Natural gas is a promising alternative fuel for internal combustion engines due to its rich reserves and low price, as well as good physical and chemical properties. Its low carbon structure and high octane number are beneficial for CO2 reduction and knock mitigation, respectively. Diesel and natural gas dual fuel combustion is a viable pathway to utilize natural gas in diesel engines. To achieve high efficiency and low emission combustion in a practical diesel engine over a wide range of operating conditions, understanding the performance responses to engine system parameter variations is needed. The controllability of two combustion strategies, diesel pilot ignition (DPI) and single injection reactivity controlled compression ignition (RCCI), were evaluated using the multi-dimension CFD simulation in this paper.

Engine experiments were carried out on a heavy-duty single-cylinder engine to investigate the effects of Gasoline Compression Ignition on emissions and performance of a heavy-duty engine operating at a high load condition. Comparisons between gasoline fueled operation and diesel fueled operation are presented using a single, near top dead center injection. Although the fuel’s cetane numbers are very different, the combustion characteristics of the two fuels at high load are similar, with the gasoline-fueled case showing less than two crank angle degree longer ignition delay. Gasoline operation showed lower soot production at similar levels of NOx, initiating study of the impact of exhaust gas recirculation which spanned a range of NOx levels covering the range from minimal urea dosing to high urea dosing. A conventional soot-NOx tradeoff was found to exist with gasoline as exists with diesel.

Premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) is a new combustion mode to reduce NOX and soot emission. It requires the optimization of the injection timing and pressure, fuel mass in pilot injection and EGR rate. A 6-cylinder, turbocharged, common rail heavy-duty diesel engine was used in this study. The effect of multiple injection strategies on diesel fuel combustion process, heat release rate, emission and economy of diesel engine is studied. The multiple injection strategies include different EGR level, pilot injection timing, pilot injection mass and post injection timing to achieve the homogeneous compression ignition and lower temperature combustion of diesel engine. Based on endoscope technology, the two-color method was applied to take the flame images in the engine cylinder and obtain soot concentration distribution, to understand the PCCI combustion in diesel engines.

Regulated gaseous and particulate matter (PM) emissions in the exhaust from a heavy duty diesel engine with biodiesel fuel were studied, and the emission characteristics of PM and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) emissions in PM were highlighted. In the experiment, pure diesel fuel and B10 (a blend of diesel and biodiesel fuels with the volume ratio of 9 to 1) fuel were chosen. The study shows that, compared to the pure diesel, the emissions of PM, soluble organic fractions (SOF) and PAHs from the heavy duty diesel engine decrease when the engine burns B10 fuel, and the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission slightly increases, while the unburned hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions also decline. Among the detected 12 kinds of PAHs, emission concentrations of 10 kinds of PAHs from the engine with B10 descend. Especially Benzo(a)pyrene equivalent toxicity (BEQ) analysis results show that the BEQ of B10 fuel decreases by 15.2% compared to pure diesel.

In this paper, an equivalent conversion method is proposed to apply the six-dimensional force road spectrum of the four-axle vehicle on the same platform to the three-axle through the axle load comparison. Further, the feasibility of the devolved equivalent conversion method is verified, and the fatigue performance improvement of the wishbone support structure of a commercial vehicle is finally achieved. Specifically, firstly, the load spectrum at each attachment point of the suspension for the three-axle vehicle is obtained through the iteration of the multi-body dynamic model. Furthermore, the finite element model of the suspension for the three-axle vehicle is established; the analysis of fatigue life for the suspension structure is performed by extracting stress amplitude through the multi-axis cyclic counting method and calculating equivalent force amplitude through McDiarmid’s criterion, combined with the SN curve of the material.

The displacement of the shaft head fails to be accurately measured while the three-axle heavy-duty truck is driving on the reinforced pavement. In order to obtain accurate fatigue load spectrum of the suspension bracket, the acceleration signals of the shaft heads of the suspension obtained by the reinforced pavement test measurement are virtually iterated as responses. A more accurate model of the rigid-flexible coupled multi-body dynamics (MBD) of the whole vehicle is established by introducing a flexible frame based on the comprehensive modal theory. Furthermore, the vertical displacements of the shaft heads are obtained by the reverse solution of the virtual iterative method with well-pleasing precision. The accuracy of the virtual iteration is verified by comparing the simulation results with the vertical acceleration of the shaft head under the reinforced pavement in the time domain and damage domain.

In recent years, one of the keys to achieving energy conservation and emission reduction and practicing sustainable development strategies is the wide-area access of large-scale electric vehicles. The charging behavior of large-scale electric vehicles has brought great challenges to the load management and adjustment capacity determination of the power system. Therefore, the prediction of adjustable ability of electric vehicle aggregator based on deep-belief-network is proposed in this paper. First of all, this paper selects the indicators related to the load of the electric bus station: including the arrival time, departure time, and daily mileage of the electric vehicle, from which the SOC variation trend and accurate charging demand of the single electric vehicle are obtained.

With the growing prosperity of the long-distance freight and urban logistics industry, the demand for cargo trucks is gradually increasing. The connecting bracket is the critical connecting part of the truck chassis, which bears the load transmitted by the road excitation and reduces the damage to the frame caused by the load. However, the occurrence of rough road conditions is inevitable in heavy-duty transportation. In this paper, road durability tests and fatigue life analysis are carried out on the original structure to ensure the safety of the vehicle. Based on the known boundary and load constraints, a lightweight and high-performance structure is obtained through size optimization, as the original structure cannot meet the performance requirements. Firstly, the road test was conducted on the truck where the original bracket structure is located.

The present work discusses the effects of intake manifold water injection in a six-cylinder heavy duty natural gas (NG) engine through one-dimensional simulation. The numerical study was carried out based on GT-Power under different engine working conditions. The established simulation model was firstly calibrated in detail through the whole engine speed sweep under full load conditions before the model of intake manifold water injector was involved, and the calibration was based on experimental data. The intake manifold water injection mass was controlled through adjustment of intake water/gas (water/natural gas) ratio, a water/gas ratio swept from 0 to 4 was selected to investigate the effects of intake manifold water injection on engine performance and emissions characteristics. On the other hand, the enhancement potential of intake manifold water injection in heavy duty NG engine under lean and stoichiometric condition was also investigated by the alteration of air-fuel ratio.

In this study, the real-world NOx and particle emissions of buses burning pure diesel fuel (D100), biodiesel fuel with 20% blend ratio (B20) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) were measured with portable emission measurement system (PEMS). The measurement conducted at 6 constant speed, which ranged from 10km/h to 60 km/h at 10km/h intervals, and a period of free driving condition. The relationship between vehicle specific power (VSP) and NOx/particle emissions of each bus were analyzed. The results show that the change rules of NOx, PN and PM emission factors with the increase of VSP were basically the same for the same bus, but for the bus using different fuel, the change rules may change. In VSP bin 0, the vehicles were mostly in idle condition and the emission factors of NOx, PN and PM of three buses were all in a relatively high level. In low VSP interval, which ranged from bin 0 to bin 4, the emissions of three buses first decreased and then increased with the growth of VSP.

Range extended electric vehicles achieve significant reductions in fuel consumption by employing as an energy source a small displacement combustion engine that is optimized for high efficiency at one, or a few, operating points. The present paper examines the impact of various energy management strategies on the particulate emissions from the auxiliary power unit (APU) of a range extended electric bus, including optimized auxiliary power unit (APU) on/off strategy, single-point strategy, two-point strategy, power-following strategy and equivalent fuel consumption minimization strategy (ECMS). In addition, this paper also compares the particulate emissions of single energy storage system and composite energy storage system on single-point energy management strategy.

In this paper, hydraulic driving system parameters of a parallel hydraulic hybrid vehicle are designed based on the regenerative braking requirement. Torque, speed and power demands during typical driving cycles are analyzed. The braking control strategy is designed considering both the braking safety and braking energy recovery efficiency. The hydraulic braking torque is determined by the braking control strategy. The proportional relationship of hydraulic pump/ motor output torque and its working pressure is considered. Through simulation with typical city driving cycles, most braking energy can be recovered by the proposed hydraulic driving system and braking control strategy.

Regarding the lithium-ion batteries used in the electric vehicle, charging time and charging efficiency are the concern of the public. In this paper, a lot of experiments were conducted to investigate the common charging strategies, including the CC-CV (constant current-constant voltage) charging and the pulse current charging, for the LiFePO4 batteries, which are still widely used in commercial vehicles. Charging temperature and the charging current in the CC phase are the main influence factors to be studied for the CC-CV charging strategy, and the contribution of the CC phase and CV phase to the whole charging is analyzed from three aspects, including the time percent, charging energy efficiency and the capacity of battery at different temperatures and charging current.

The performances of heavy-duty natural gas engines have been limited by combustion temperature and NOx emissions for a long time. Recently, water injection technology has been widely considered as a technical solution in reducing fuel consumption and emissions simultaneously in both gasoline and diesel engines. This paper focuses on the impacts of intake manifold water injection on characteristics of combustion and emissions in a natural gas heavy-duty engine through numerical methods. A computational model was setup and validated with experimental data of pressure traces in a CFD software coupled with detailed chemical kinetics. The simulation was mainly carried out in low-speed and full-load conditions, and knock level was also measured and calculated by maximum amplitude of pressure oscillations (MAPO).

Previous studies have indicated that longer torque increase time benefits the reduction of emissions during transient process for a diesel engine. However, quantitative conclusions on reduction of emissions and effects on fuel economy have not been made clear so far. The aim of this study was to evaluate the transient process of diesel engine under different torque increase time, and to find the quantitative statement between torque increase time, fuel economy and engine-out emissions. To do this, experiment was carried out on a 7L common rail diesel engine used for commercial vehicles. Three engine speeds (1100r·min−1, 1300r·min−1 and 1500r·min−1) were chosen to represent an engine working range. For each speed, the engine torque is increased within different time (0.5s, 1s, 2s and 5s). It was shown that, in the transient process mentioned above, engine torque increase time effects fuel economy, smoke opacity and CO emission.

As the commercial vehicle increases staggeringly in China, environmental pollution and excessively fuel consumption can't be neglected anymore. Vehicle thermal management has been adopted by many vehicle manufactures as an ideal alternative to reduce fuel consumption and exhaust emission by its cost-efficient and effective merit. In addition, the components in heavy duty commercial vehicle engine hood may suffer overheat harm. Hence investigating the thermal characteristics in engine hood can be an effective way to identify and dismiss the potential overheat harm. In terms of this, the paper has adopted CFD simulation method to obtain the comprehensive thermal flow field characteristics of engine hood in a heavy commercial vehicle. Then by analyzing the thermal flow field in engine hood, concerning optimization strategies were put forward to improve the thermal environment.

As a critical technology for autonomous vehicles, high precise positioning is essential for automated container terminals to implement intelligent dispatching and to improve container transport efficiency. Because of the unstable performance of global positioning system (GPS) in some circumstances, an ultra wide band (UWB) positioning system is developed for autonomous trucks in an automated container terminal. In this paper, an asynchronous structure is adopted in the system, and a three-dimensional (3D) localization method is proposed. Other than a traditional UWB positioning system with a server, in this asynchronous system, positions are calculated in the vehicle. Therefore, propagation delays from the server to vehicles are eliminated, and the real-time performance can be significantly improved. Traditional 3D localization methods based on time difference of arrival (TDOA) are mostly invalid with anchors in the same plane.

The driving conditions of commercial logistics vehicles have the characteristics of combined urban and suburban roads with relatively fixed mileage and cargo load alteration, which affect the vehicular fuel economy. To this end, an adaptive equivalent consumption minimization strategy (A-ECMS) with vehicle speed and weight recognition is proposed to improve the fuel economy for a range-extender electric van for logistics in this work. The driving conditions are divided into nine representative groups with different vehicle speed and weight statuses, and the driving patterns are recognized with the use of the bagged trees algorithm through vehicle simulations. In order to generate the reference SOC near the optimal values, the optimal SOC trajectories under the typical driving cycles with different loads are solved by the shooting method and the optimal slopes for these nine patterns are obtained.

As the global economy grows, so does the demand for heavy-duty commercial vehicles, both on-road and off-road. Currently, these vehicles are powered almost entirely by diesel engines. There is an imminent need to reduce the greenhouse gases (GHG) from this growing sector, but alternatives to the internal combustion engine face many challenges and can increase GHG emissions. For example, through simple analysis, this work will show that a Class 8 long haul on-highway truck powered entirely by battery electrics and charged from the average US electrical grid, yields significantly higher CO2 emissions per ton-mile as compared to an engine using alternative fuels. Thus, the most pragmatic and impactful way to reduce GHG emissions in commercial vehicles is using low carbon alternative fuels, such as ethanol made from renewable sources.